(LifeSiteNews) — Pending legislation in Connecticut would allow state officials to heavily scrutinize homeschooling parents, according to a legal expert.
Last week, the Connecticut Education Committee voted 26-20 to advance controversial legislation that would impose greater burdens on homeschooling moms and dads. Though titled innocently as a bill about “equivalent instruction,” advocates warn the consequences would be far more dire.
The proposed legislation would also mandate a curriculum review, which undermines one of the benefits of homeschooling, which is flexibility in what parents teach their kids.
Local school district officials, who presumably would want more kids in the schools to increase funding, would be granted enormous powers as well.
The law would order parents to visit the local school district every year and fill out forms in order to homeschool their kids.
However, the school district would not simply process paperwork but would be empowered to withhold permission until the Department of Children and Families confirmed there were no active child abuse investigations.
Advocates for the increased regulation cite several horrific examples of children who were removed from public schools under the guise of homeschooling when indeed the purpose was to hide abuse.
A Democratic legislative leader did not respond to a request for comment on the legislation.
LifeSiteNews contacted Democratic Representative Jennifer Leeper, who chairs the Education Committee, and asked for more details on the required “equivalent instruction.” LifeSiteNews also emailed Leeper questions about any steps she had taken to address concerns by opponents of the bill. Neither she, nor listed media representative Jackson Delaney, responded to questions on Monday morning.
However, an expert with the Homeschool Legal Defense Association detailed numerous concerns with the bill.
Bill would take Connecticut from being one of the best to the worst
Currently Connecticut “is the one of the least regulated states in the nation” and has no “curriculum mandates” or “portfolio reviews,” according to attorney Ralph Rodriguez.
This freedom to teach kids at home would turn “that model on its head,” Rodriguez told LifeSiteNews on a phone interview. The bill would still not explicitly contain curriculum mandates, he said.
The Homeschool Legal Defense Association attorney said the proposed notification requirement to child services is the “most problematic” part of the law.
Though he shares concerns about detecting abuse, Rodriguez said the creation of lists of homeschooling parents without clear mechanisms to protect data is the wrong solution.
Under the law, the Department of Children and Families would receive a “notification” whenever parents asked to homeschool. They would then have to sign off on the request by checking there are no open abuse cases.
“So, in our estimation it’s basically asking permission from the government to exercise a fundamental right, and you’re involving an agency that historically has nothing to do with education,” Rodriguez said.
LifeSiteNews asked him to elaborate further on the argument that this law is needed to catch abuse.
“There’s no nothing written in the bill as to what happens with any list that are made for these seemingly thousands of families that will be put on notice to the [Department of Children and Families],” Rodriguez told LifeSiteNews.
In fact, advocates for increased government oversight into homeschooling killed an amendment on a related bill that would have “eradicated” the lists from a government database.
He said it is not clear how large the homeschooling community is in Connecticut, but said estimates have put it around 28,000 to 35,000 kids.
The homeschooling legal group “is very serious about making sure child abuse is rooted out, but we believe there are more effective ways, namely the state being able to reform and better situate its child welfare system,” Rodriguez said.
Connecticut law latest attack on educational rights
This proposed law is not the only one pushed by blue-state legislators that would crack down on the rights of parents to educate their children.
Last year, leftists in Illinois tried to crack down on homeschooling in the state. The law followed a model created by the “Coalition for Responsible Home Education.” That group receives money from the left-wing Ben and Jerry’s Foundation and is explicitly anti-Christian.
“Christian fundamentalists in the United States have worked to enact their regressive ideas about gender and race by using homeschooling to isolate and abuse their own children,” the group claimed.
However, the bill failed after opposition from black Chicago Democrats who warned about government intrusion.
House Bill 2827 would massively expand the power of public school officials to oversee homeschoolers within their district. Critics warn the legislation could lead to mandated vaccinations as well as other heavy-handed state involvement. Public backlash against the bill has dwarfed supporters of it – about 42,000 people have filed witness slips opposing the bill, while only 1,000 have filed public support for it.
Democratic state Representative La Shawn Ford argued against the bill during a rally, using liberal language about policing and criminal justice to criticize the legislation.
“Right now, I don’t believe the bill is what’s needed in Illinois,” Ford said. “I believe in restorative justice and I believe in making sure that people don’t have a pathway to the criminal justice system.”
He said the law created a “pipeline to the criminal justice system for parents.”
“How can we criminalize parents for wanting to love their children?”
